Choose your language

Sub Navigation

Key management personnel changes at SWISS

24 October 2012

SWISS has announced some important changes within its Commercial Division in both personnel and organizational terms. Markus Binkert, who is currently Head of Marketing, will succeed the long-serving Rudolf Schumacher as Head of Sales & Marketing Switzerland. The present Sales & Marketing Europe and Sales & Marketing Intercontinental departments will be merged under the leadership of Arved von zur Mühlen. Bernd Bauer, who is currently Head of Sales & Marketing Europe, will also assume new duties as Head of Revenue Management, Pricing & Distribution. These organizational and personnel changes will take effect as of 1 January 2013.

Markus Binkert (40), who is currently SWISS’s Head of Marketing, will take on new duties as Head of Sales & Marketing Switzerland. Binkert succeeds the long-serving Rudolf Schumacher, who will retire at the end of this year.

These new appointments go hand in hand with a reorganization that will see the creation of a new department named Sales & Marketing Switzerland, Germany & Austria, brought about through the existing Sales & Marketing Switzerland’s assimilation of Country Management Germany and Regional Management Austria & Central Eastern Europe. “This will put the key home markets of the Lufthansa Group under the same sales and marketing roof at SWISS, too,” comments Chief Commercial Officer Holger Hätty, to whom the new unit will report. “And this will further strengthen our position in the markets concerned.”

In a parallel move, SWISS’s present Sales & Marketing Europe (excluding Germany & Austria/CEE) and Sales & Marketing Intercontinental are to be amalgamated into a new Sales & Marketing International department. The new unit will be headed by Arved von zur Mühlen (43), who is currently Head of Sales & Marketing Intercontinental.

Bernd Bauer (47) currently Head of Sales & Marketing Europe, will become Head of Revenue Management, Pricing & Distribution, succeeding Oliver Barthelmeh (35), who will be leaving SWISS at the end of November to take on a new career challenge within the Lufthansa Group as Chairman & CEO of LSG SkyChefs München GmbH.

“The departure of Rudolf Schumacher and Oliver Barthelmeh means the loss of two outstanding management personalities,” commented Holger Hätty. “On behalf of the Management Board I thank them both for their great commitment and successful development of their departments and wish them all the best for the future.”

The organizational changes streamline the structures and further enhance efficiency within SWISS’s Commercial Division. “The fact that we have been able to fill all the key vacancies with personnel from our own ranks is testimony to the calibre of our management corps,” stated CCO Holger Hätty. “I wish the new appointees much success in their new assignments.”

The successor to Markus Binkert, who will remain Head of Marketing until 31.12.2012, will be announced in due course.